


Five Questions

by naberiie



Series: King and Lionheart: Finnrey ♔ [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Rewrite, F/M, Gen, Jedi Training, Kylo Ren (Mentioned) - Freeform, Post-The Force Awakens, Snoke (Mentioned) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 13:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13272069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naberiie/pseuds/naberiie
Summary: Before Rey stands the elusive Luke Skywalker - ace pilot, Master Jedi, war hero, legend. She was sent to bring him back and was ready with the answers General Organa had given her - “He’s been away a long time. He’ll have questions.”Rey did not expect that some of his questions would be abouther.





	Five Questions

**Author's Note:**

> This can be considered the prequel fic to a longer, multi-chapter Finnrey fic currently in the works. I wanted to explain where Rey would be for the beginning of that fic, but most - if not all - of that fic will be from Finn's POV. Also I wanted to rewrite how Luke and Rey's interactions had been handled in The Last Jedi.
> 
> Both this one-shot and the planned fic takes place after The Force Awakens; neither will draw much from The Last Jedi.
> 
> Finn and Rey do not explicitly interact in this fic; however, their relationship is the cornerstone and focus.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Rey. I’m with the Resistance. General Organa sent me.”

At the mention of his sister, Luke Skywalker’s face shifted. He’d been studying her from behind shuttered eyes, the lightsaber still clutched in his hands. His father’s lightsaber. “Leia?” His voice was weaker than she’d expected. She’d expected a war hero, a legend. Not this tired old man. “Hm. I should have expected she’d find me eventually.”

Rey nodded. “The Resistance needs you.”

“The Resistance.” He stared down at the saber hilt and turned it over in his hands. “So. The war goes on, even after all this time. And Leia continues to fight.”

“We destroyed the First Order’s planet-killer,” she said, wanting to give him some good news to soften the blow of the bad. _And the worst to come_ , she thought, the memory of a terrible flash of red lancing Han Solo’s chest. And then the falling, falling, _falling_ … She cleared her throat and went on. “Their base. It’s destroyed.”

“Destroyed their base?” Now she could see the memories flit in front of his eyes, and the corner of his mouth quirked up, a gentle, bittersweet laugh. “Did it involve smuggling crates or stolen armor? Trash compactors?”

“Wha- no?” _Trash compactors?_

Luke chuckled softly, but didn’t elaborate. Once more he turned the hilt over in his hands, running heavily worn biotech fingers over the mechanisms. The thought of the blade in her hands still filled Rey with a desire for ultimate power to protect, to save. To extract revenge upon the First Order – to kill Kylo Ren.

Finn, lying cold in the snow, his back sliced open. And then in the med-center, covered in bacta patches and surrounded by machines.

Something inside her mind whispered he was still asleep, and a subtle glance to the blue signal she wore on her wrist confirmed it. Her heart twisted painfully. _Wake up, Finn. Please wake up._

Luke cocked his head, considered her thoughtfully, like he sensed her pain. _He probably can, as a Jedi,_ she reminded herself. And as she thought the word, the Force tugged on her mind. That thing that had freed her, that had called the lightsaber to her – something in her had awoken but she couldn’t grasp its edges. It fluttered, elusive, just beyond her grasp. There was something about this world, though. An ancient gravitational pull towards something in its very core. And there was something about Luke Skywalker – like a channel that had been blocked up. _Was that why he hadn’t sensed Han…?_

She shook herself. _Don’t get distracted._ She needed to go back to Finn.

“Ah. I understand why Leia sent you.”

Rey frowned at him. “To bring you back.”

“No. There is more to you, Rey of the Resistance.” Luke Skywalker cast once last glance around the hilltop, towards the crude shale gravestone by his feet. He gripped his father’s lightsaber tighter in his hand, and fixed her with such an intense stare that Rey had to glance away. “Much more, indeed.”

And then he started off, back towards the Caretakers’ village with long, confident steps.

_Who am I to him?_

✧✧✧

“Where’s Han?”

Luke opened the door to his small hut and as he stepped inside, he asked again, “You came in the _Falcon_ – where’s Han?”

Rey blinked at the name. And then – unexpected tears welled up in her eyes as she watched Luke’s expression change from questioning to disbelieving to mournful. He seemed to shrink in the dim light of the hut, like he was pulling a thick blanket around himself, the lines of his face deepened with quiet grief.

She didn’t need to answer, but she thought he deserved to know. Rey swallowed and said in a bitter whisper, “Kylo Ren killed him.”

Luke stared at her, his eyes unreadable. If he recognized the name, he gave no sign. Outside the hut, the Caretakers moved about their stone village, unperturbed with the strangers and their revelations. And then he exhaled slowly and nodded, closing his eyes. “I’ve been away too long,” he murmured, more to himself than to Rey. “Leia needs me. Not the Resistance. Leia… and Chewie? Where is he?”

“He’s here. He’s mourning.” Chewbacca had hiked to the top of one of the steep mountains the day before. Rey had seen him early that morning when she’d left the hut where she’d spent the night. Chewie had been a mere shadow in front of a golden fire that cut through the pale mists rolling in from the ocean. Rey didn’t know much about Wookiee mourning rituals – but Luke nodded, like he understood.

She wondered who else they’d had to mourn.

When Luke sank to the floor, she started forward, her hands reaching out to help him. He waved her gesture away like an afterthought, and continued in that quiet voice, “I thought… if I closed myself off to the Force, focused only on the energy _here_ , the answers to my mistakes would reveal themselves… but instead I abandoned her. A mistake. I’ve been away too long,” he said again, quietly.

Rey fidgeted, wanting to help but not knowing how. Her heart had twisted painfully at that word – _abandoned_. He sank into a mediation posture with ease, flowing into it like water. Hands on his knees, legs crossed, the salt-stained robe puddling on the stone floor. Rey’s hand fluttered awkwardly in the air. He cracked one eye open and gestured with his chin to the space in front of him. She hesitated only a moment, sensing… _something._ Her mission – her written mission – was to find Luke. Bring him back.

But she wanted to learn how to tie a part of her soul to Finn, so that she would know the moment he woke.

That – _he_ – was why she had agreed to find Luke Skywalker.

Again, that strange sense of this place fluttered just out of her reached. Something ancient that echoed in her blood, that begged her to _listen_. To _learn_.

So she sat down in front of him, mirroring his stance. The cold stone bit into her calves but she pushed it aside.

“I came here to study the Force.” Luke began slowly. “This place, this world – it’s one of the birthplaces of the Jedi. One of many. I’ve studied the texts, I’ve meditated on my choices. On my mistakes. I trained Han and Leia’s son, and many others with him. He wasn’t known as _Kylo_ , but _Ben_ , after my – and my father’s – own Master. Snoke-”

Rey’s lip curled into an automatic snarl at the name. She remembered the promise of power, different from the one she felt when she held the Skywalker blade – a corrupted and filthy promise, saturated in darkness. In evil. Snoke had whispered to her that killing Kylo would be easy, _oh so easy_ …

“Snoke had taken a hold of my nephew. I sensed the darkness in him but I failed to halt it, to teach him how to control it. He burned our new Temple… and then, provoked or persuaded by Snoke, he slaughtered my students. Every single one of them.” Luke’s voice had faltered down to a harsh whisper, like each word was a knife’s edge against his throat.

Rey stared, but she did not speak. What comfort would her words bring to a man in mourning? And now she’d brought him even more pain.

“After I searched for any survivors, searched for Ben – for Kylo – and found none… I came here to see if I could learn from the very first Jedi, if they’d struggled with the darkness in their students.” His eyes opened, drifted to something – or someone – over Rey’s shoulder and he smiled faintly, but when she glanced behind her there was nothing. “I see now that I shouldn’t have closed myself off to the currents of the Force. I thought I’d brought myself the peace to find the answers to my mistakes, but instead I merely handed the burden to others.”

General Organa had been right, then. Luke had closed himself off – otherwise he’d have sensed the genocide of the Hosnian system, and he would have sensed Han’s death. His death at the hands of his _son._  

Rey felt it, when Luke Skywalker opened his mind back to the galaxy. She felt it rush back to him like an old, beloved friend, and suddenly her own senses spiked into high gear. She was saturated in it, almost completely overwhelmed with the sudden sensory onslaught.  _Is this what it's like for him all the time?_ She could hardly breathe from the sudden and intense pressure of it, of the way she was suddenly hyper-aware of _everything:_  one of the Caretakers was poking around in her bag outside the door. A family of porgs had already settled in the _Falcon_ ’s engines. And Chewie was still shrouded in bitter sadness at the peak of the mountain.

It was like an immense pressure on her chest, and when she looked up, Luke looked somehow more youthful, and a thousand times wearier. Merely being in his presence made the Force that much more powerful, that much more  _real_ to her. She could actually, finally, grasp it. It was terrifying - and exhilarating.

She waited for a few minutes. And then – in the back of her mind, a pulse, growing stronger by the moment, a dozing, dull golden light.

_Finn – it’s Finn!_

Luke could teach her how about the Force; he could teach her to harness this power. These abilities. She _needed_ him to teach her – but as she looked at the weary old man in front of her, she knew she had to wait. So she settled back and tentatively began to explore the newly expanded reach of the Force within her, gently cupped Finn’s presence in her mind and pulled it protectively towards her center.

✧✧✧

“Why are you here?”

Rey jumped and spun, and the lightsaber deactivated in her hand. When she’d left him in his hut, Luke had been so deep in meditation that when she’d tried reaching out to him with the Force – a clumsy attempt – it had been like plunging her hand into cold, dark waters that went on for unknown miles and miles. She’d grown tired of waiting for him, tired of meditating - or pretending to meditate. Night had fallen and her legs had been full of needles – she’d stumbled over her pack and nearly pulled down a shelf with her when she tried to catch herself – but Luke had not stirred.  Chewbacca’s fire had gone out, but the lights of the _Falcon_ were on. And thanks to her newfound, heightened Force sensitivity, she knew he still needed time to mourn. And so she’d left to explore the shale cliffs and mountains.

Rey didn’t know all the names of the green things that grew in the thin, rocky soil, but she’d run her hands over every plant she could find.

And then, of all things, she’d found a _tree._

Tucked in between three steep cliff-sides of deep gray shale, the tree had long ago been petrified to stone. It had been hollowed out. The path she’d been following had led right to a crudely carved doorway within the trunk itself. And inside that hollowed out space – she’d found the books.

Wrapped in ancient leather, the first she’d opened had almost called to her by name. _Lightsaber Kata – Form I. Shii-Cho. Initiate’s Steps._

The drawings were simple but she had understood their shapes immediately, had noticed the flow of the movements. And when she’d pulled Skywalker’s saber from her pouch and activated it, the steps had felt so familiar she almost wanted to weep. She recognized a more refined version of the movements she’d used against Kylo Ren. Raw, wild, untamed – but again that power, that desire to protect.

When she tried to explain, however, she couldn’t. Luke stood in the small opening of the space, backlit by the brilliant moonlight. He asked again, “Why are you here?”

“I was just looking around – I didn’t want to disturb-”

But Luke was already shaking his head. “No, not in this space. It’s not the temple, but it still called to you – the _presence_ of the history called to you – that’s obvious. No. Rey of the Resistance – why are you _here?”_

Here. Ahch-To. Here. For Luke Skywalker. Here – for __Finn.__

“I want to learn the ways of the Jedi.” The words leapt out of her as if they had been fired from a blaster. “I want to help Finn.”

“Finn?”

“He’s my – my…” How could she explain what Finn meant to her? The man who’d fallen from the skies, who had taken her hand, who had _come back for her_ …

But Luke was already nodding, an understanding gleam in his eyes. “Leia sent you for a _reason_. Do you sense it?”

The lightsaber almost hummed in her hands, and in her mind, Finn’s golden light glowed brighter than ever.

✧✧✧

“What do you know about the Force?”

Rey sat cross-legged on the wide stone slab, her eyes shut tight against the rising sun. She had not slept all night, but she was not tired, not even in the slightest. Every part of her was alive with adrenaline and excitement. “I know that you can use it to… to _convince_ people to do things for you, to make them forget what they’ve seen.”

Like what she had done with that ‘trooper on Starkiller.

Luke laughed next to her, and again she felt that presence that she had felt in the hut. “That’s a small part of it. What else?”

“You can… use it to… to lift stuff?” Before she’d even finished the words, she was already wincing.

Luke gave her a short sigh in response. “Yes. But now try to focus on the Force _beyond_ the physical. How it can enhance your senses. You can use it to manipulate objects around you, or even yourself. That’s the easy bit – but _what else_?”

Rey thought harder. The sun did little to cut through the bitter cold winds of Ahch-To, and the porgs called out to one another in an endless cacophony of shrill cries. She adjusted again, straightened her back, and focused.

She’d used the Force to escape the torture chamber on Starkiller, had used it to call the lightsaber to her, had used it to strike down Kylo Ren – but even before that, even on Jakku…

She’d always had a knack – a _sense_ – for scouting out wrecks or water in the endless, shifting dunes. She knew which beings to avoid or who was trustworthy. She was always able to defend herself and others with confidence. She knew how to survive. Technology almost came alive in her hands; she could always find a way to repair even the most worn droids or mechs.

_Is that the Force?_

In her mind, Finn stirred, and she nearly fell backwards off the rock. “Oh! He moved! I can sense him – I can sense Finn! Just a little, but – but that’s the Force, isn’t it?”

Luke was quiet, but she could almost feel his proud smile, so she went on with more confidence. “The Force is… the Force is what connects us to each other. I can feel it, all around me, around us, around this place.”

The Caretakers down in their village; Chewie in the _Falcon_ , preparing for their eventual departure; the porgs and fish and all the creatures on the island; the ancient tree and the books within; and something far more ancient carved in the rocks, far below where she sat… She could see it all, see it all clearly painted in her mind as if she were flying – as if she was present, everywhere at once, like she was the very air itself.

She turned her mind’s eye to the skies, to the tapestry of stars, and stretched out her mind and feelings until she felt as never-ending as the galaxy itself.

“The Force surrounds all living beings, Rey. It connects us to _everything_.”

And, light-years away, Finn woke up.

✧✧✧

“When did you realize?”

They sat at the dejarik table in the lounge area of the _Falcon_. As soon as Rey had felt Finn wake up, as soon as the indicator on her wrist had changed from blue to brilliant, wonderful green, she’d been ready. She’d pushed Luke to pack as quickly as he could and made sure they had enough supplies to last the long hyperspace flight back to the Resistance base on D’Qar, unable to sit until the warped blue and white marbles of subspace had overtaken them.

Only then had she collapsed in nervous excitement, the long night of training – of _Jedi_ training! – catching up with her, all at once. But even that sudden exhaustion was miniscule compared to her eagerness to get back to Finn, to her desperate desire and aching _need_ to see him alive and well.

That horrible wound on his back… She shuddered, pressed down those memories of how cold he’d been in her arms.

The light continued to glow soft green on her wrist.

_When had I realized?_

“When he was about to leave. He asked me to come with him, but I couldn’t abandon Beebee-ate yet. I had to get him back to the Resistance.” The long night had left her open and honest. Luke watched her with quiet eyes, enshrouded in his massive robes. “Finn told me everything. He was raised to fight for the First Order, but he refused. And if it hadn’t been for Beebee… I would have gone with him.”

She didn’t need to say the words out loud. But she loved him. She almost thought that if she closed her eyes, she would see that light that connected them, even across the stars. They’d fought off the First Order for each other.

“I see.”

“He’s Force-sensitive, too.” She glanced sideways at Luke, who raised an eyebrow but remained quiet. So she went on: “I know he is. He’s like… he’s like this brilliant light in my head, in my chest. And he used the lightsaber to protect me, he fought off that monster.” Rey looked down at the indicator on her wrist, that beautiful, hopeful green. “Will you train him, too? Once he’s healed?”

Luke Skywalker – ace pilot, war hero, legend, and now her Jedi Master – smiled.


End file.
